


Not a Relationship

by Bianca Neve (Kathie_snow), filistinist



Series: SPN-Verse [1]
Category: Inception (2010), Supernatural
Genre: Adventure, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Demon Arthur, Humor, Hunter Dom, Hunter Eames, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-12 16:17:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7113172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathie_snow/pseuds/Bianca%20Neve, https://archiveofourown.org/users/filistinist/pseuds/filistinist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cobb sells his soul to bring Mal back to life. But that should have nothing to do with Eames, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Не отношения](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6375910) by [Bianca Neve (Kathie_snow)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathie_snow/pseuds/Bianca%20Neve). 



Eames was feeling good. So good, that he had no thoughts left in his head about the exhausting and just-barely-finished job (damn wendigos!), or about the fact that the money he got for it would barely cover next month's rent, or about Mal. No, he didn't want to think about Mal at all, and especially not at a moment like this. Sighing, he latched on to Arthur's neck with a kiss, enjoying his delicate, exotic scent, the familiar way it excited him and heated his blood.

“I like it when you end up covered with love bites,” he confided hoarsely. “I like it when...”

“And I like it when you babble,” Arthur laughed in reply. His eyes glittered, as if he really was amused. “But that's not what your mouth is for, Eames.”

And he shoved at Eames's chest, forcing him to roll over onto his back, and then immediately arranged himself on top, propping himself up with his hands on Eames's shoulders, and looking down on him with a mixture of happiness and arrogance. Eames felt all the tiny hairs on his body stand on end. Yes, there were plenty of protective sigils hidden in his tatoos, but still, when he and Arthur were this close, this intimate, his lust was mixed with a thin, cold trickle of fear. And this turned him on even more.

He must be a real pervert.

“And what is my mouth for, according to you?” he asked innocently, arranging his hands on Arthur's hips—in hopes that he would get the hint.

Eames's cock was aching from lack of attention, and after all, Arthur's butt cheeks were so close.

“Well, you're not so bad at bargaining with it, and that magical tongue of yours...”

Here he had to shut up himself, because Eames pulled his head in and pressed his lips to Arthur's mouth. Trying not to neglect to use his “magical tongue,” either. It was awesome, and Arthur tasted like cherry gum and cappuccino, and then he raised his hips slightly and Eames moaned aloud—his cock plunged into a hot, yielding body.

“Awesome,” Eames exhaled, biting lightly on Arthur's bottom lip, chin, earlobe, as the other moved slowly, and sparks flashed in front of Eames's eyes with each movement. They should definitely do this more often. “We should...”

The door of the hotel room flew off its hinges with a crash, falling to the floor in a cloud of dust, just like in a Hollywood movie—but Eames wasn't planning on enjoying the special effects. He grabbed his gun from under the pillow and sat up with a lurch, trying to put an arm around Arthur's waist to keep his balance.

What the fuck?

“Dom, what the fuck is wrong with you?!” he screamed, lowering the gun. Because he just might fire it in his outrage. Accidentally. “Get out!”

Dom Cobb, his friend and partner, made no move to leave. Standing stiffly in the doorway like some angel of retribution, he widened his stance and aimed his own gun at them.

Not at them.

At Arthur.

“Damage this body, and I'll rip the soul right out of you, without waiting for the contract to expire,” Arthur promised in an even tone.

This did not sound a bit like an idle threat. Eames sat up straighter just in case, shielding him from Dom—so that he wouldn't get it into his head to shoot after all.

“Eames, get away from him!” yelled Dom. “Quickly, move! It's a demon!”

“Dom, lower the gun and get out,” demanded Eames.

Surprised, Dom really did lower his weapon—thank God for small mercies—and frowned.

“Eames, you're gay?”

“Eames, you keep a gun under your pillow?” asked Arthur at the same time.

Eames groaned inwardly.

“Naturally, you don't think I trust you, do you?”

Arthur smiled, flattered. The smile looked unbelievably good on him, and Eames wished even more strongly for Dom to make himself scarce.

But Dom wasn't like that. He would never leave a friend “in trouble”!

“Demon, I swear I will blast a hole through you head,” he proclaimed threateningly.

“Jesus Christ, Dom!” Eames started to say—and lost his track of thought, because Arthur's muscles contracted— _all_ his muscles—and Eames's dick was still standing up proudly, like a candle, and no amount of guns or threats had any effect on it. “I know that he's a demon! Get out of here, and put the god-damned door back in its place! Ooooh god, I had no idea that the name of the lord has that effect...”

“But Eames!...” protested Dom.

“Bye, Eames,” said Arthur.

And dissolved into thin air. Son of a bitch, he just disappeared into thin air, leaving Eames with his manly virtue sticking up, in the company of Dom the dumbass, and completely unsatisfied! And that's all he got for last night!

“Go fuck yourself, Dom,” suggested Eames, pissed off.

“What's going on here?” Mal peeked past Dom's shoulder.

Eames quickly covered himself with a blanket, still inwardly cursing everyone and everything. He couldn't bring himself to curse out loud in front of Mal.

Because, actually, all of this was because of Mal.

Groaning, Eames leaned back in bed, covered his face with a hand, and hoped that Dom would get lost. And that he would put that shitty door back in place—before the hotel owner tried to shake some big bucks out of Eames for damages.

“That's what I get for my altruism,” he complained bitterly.

“Eames,” judging by the sounds, Dom was tackling the door after all, “What was that he said about a contract?”

-~-~-~-

Actually, all of this was because of Mal. Beautiful Mal, cheerful Mal, vivacious Mal, who had been Dom's wife, the apple of his eye, and the light of his life. _Had been_ , because damn wendigos, because Eames and Dom drove off to Arizona, and Mal was left alone, and that's exactly when some bastard of a demon decided to borrow her body. And when Dom came back home, to Santa Barbara, and noticed that something was off, the demon tried to kill him. How did it happen that Mal broke her neck falling out of a second floor window? Eames never tried to find out the details. The neighbors insisted that she jumped out on her own and fell badly, but why would the demon kill its host body? Although with demons, who really knows. It was enough that Dom hadn't been locked up for murder. And for the first week after the funeral, he'd held up okay.

Eames should have suspected something. Either when Dom started spending all his time in his office, buried in thick, dusty folios. Or when he showed no intention of visiting Mal's grave, and instead of him it was Eames—still slightly concussed (damn wendigos!)--who had to put flowers on her headstone. Or when Dom invited Eames over for a drink, and then disappeared somewhere, leaving the key under the doormat—no, seriously, how is it that his house hasn't been broken into before?--and Eames spent half the night waiting for him, wondering where a newly-minted grief-stricken widower could be at such a time, and if he should organize a search party.

It's the shock, thought Eames. Dom is not himself, he needs time. He's trying to cope, he's searching for a way to numb the pain.

Ha ha. And no, Eames was not laughing because it was funny. He should have known better when it came to Dom—because together, they'd finished more than their share of whiskey bottles and ganked more than their share of werewolves. _Ha ha_.

The drinking invitation was the day before yesterday, and yesterday morning, after Eames got a text from his partner, calmed down, and was sleeping peacefully on Dom's living room couch—he was awakened by the smell of coffee. It was a sweet, sweet aroma, and for a few seconds Eames just enjoyed it, wondering if it was worth it to get up and get his well-deserved cup, or if he should sleep some more...

“Good morning, Eames,” said Mal.

Eames would have to admit that he yelped. He'd seen plenty in his life—vampires and ghosts, demons and honest-to-goodness human cannibals, psychos who were confused for a long time with supernatural monsters, and monsters who were wanted by the police as psychopaths.

But he'd never experienced such horror before.

“What's the matter with you, dear?” Mal was standing in the kitchen door; she had an anxious expression on her face and a steaming mug of fragrant coffee in her hand. “Admit it, did you have a bit too much alcohol last night? Or does your head still hurt?”

She didn't look like a ghost. Eames started slapping at his pockets frantically, because he must have a gun somewhere, and holy water, and salt, but right then he could not remember where exactly he'd put any of those things. Later on, he would most likely be horribly embarrassed for panicking like this, but it's not every morning that your friend's week-old corpse brings you coffee!

Someone laid a hand on his shoulder, and it was only then that he noticed that he'd rolled over the back of the couch and was looking at Mal from this cover, and that Dom stood frozen behind him.

With a very complicated look on his face.

“I'll explain everything later,” he whispered from the corner of his mouth.

What?

“What the fuck?” asked Eames inelegantly.

The hand on his shoulder squeezed so hard that it's fingers threatened to snap bone.

“Darling, me and Eames need to talk,” Dom's soppy-sweet tone would not have fooled a mentally retarded child.

But Mal smiled and nodded her head:

“Of course.”

She set the mug down on the coffee table—Eames felt his muscles grow stiff as stone—and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah,” he said in a strangled voice, “we need to talk _real bad_ , Dom.”

-~-~-~-

“What did you do, dumbass?” Eames tried real hard to keep his voice down, but he was barely managing. He had the urge to grab Dom by the shoulders and shake him until his head fell off and rolled under the table. The remaining body would probably have more brain tissue in it—even in just the spinal cord. “What have you done?”

Dom glared at him from under lowered brows.

“Nothing. It has nothing to do with you.”

Such contradictory information.

“Idiot,” Eames clutched at his own hair and turned away, so that he wouldn't be tempted to clutch at any part of Dom. “What an idiot. Please tell me you didn't go to a crossroads.”

There was only silence behind him, and Eames turned back around. He already knew the answer. Mal was not a ghost, she was quite real and alive, and there was only one way to make that happen.

“I can't be without her,” Dom lifted his chin.

“But you can be without your soul?” Eames asked softly.

All other things aside, Mal had been in heaven, enjoying eternal bliss and all that, and Dom dragged her out of there, because he couldn't “be without her.” And what then—will he end up in Hell? And they'd be separated again, this time forever?

Apparently, Dom hadn't thought of that—and deep in his heart, Eames understood him. He didn't know what he would have done in Dom's place, if his grief had been so immediate and unbearable that any solution would seem acceptable.

The problems always started later.

“Which crossroads did you go to?” Eames asked. “Was it here, in Santa Barbara?”

Dom squinted suspiciously. It looked frightful.

“And how do you even know about this? You knew that she could be brought back, and you didn't tell me?”

And _there_ was a topic that Eames preferred not to discuss.

“Was it in Santa Barbara?” he roared, hoping to get an answer before Dom became offended at his tone and started interrogating him again.

“Yes. But, Eames...”

“I have to go!” Eames waved him off. “I'll see you tomorrow. Don't call me in the meantime. Thanks for the coffee, Mal!” That last bit he yelled from the entrance hall, hurriedly shoving his feet into his boots and pulling on his jacket.

“Eames!” Dom seemed to wake up when Eames was already closing the door on his way out. “Come back this instant!”

Aha, sure thing.


	2. Chapter 2

Eames checked the time on his phone. One minute to midnight, and the unanswered calls and texts from his partner were piling up. Well, he couldn't care less. Eames had no intention of talking to him. Shivering from the cool wind, he looked around: at the bushes on both sides of the road, at the bright half-moon in the sky, at the ground under his feet, where his little gift box rested at the bottom of a shallow hole, at the bushes again...

“Hey there, little hunter,” a husky, sexy contralto drawled behind him.

Eames turned around. The demoness was just adorably cute: soft ringlets of hair, perky breasts. The entire advertising policy of her business, on display. And a charming impertinence, which gave her away as a newbie.

“Hi, sweetheart. I want to see your boss. Bye, sweetheart.”

The young woman was actually struck speechless for a moment—barely noticeable, but Eames was observant. Apparently no one had prepared her for such a turn of events.

“You can discuss your important business with me,” she recovered quickly.

“I don't want to discuss it with you,” Eames sighed. “Call your boss. _Please._ ”

No, he'd obviously been too polite with these demons. Because the girl, instead of complying with his easy and uncomplicated request, smiled and took a step forward.

“You're free to go,” this time the voice was male, and Eames barely suppressed a sigh of relief. Arthur could have stayed away altogether, and just for that Eames was willing to forgive him any overly-dramatic entrance.

The girl disappeared, as if she'd never been there, but Eames was no longer looking. He turned around sharply and put on a fake smile.

“Long time no see. I'm happy to see you—or actually, no, not really. Give the soul back.” All this he blurted out in one breath, and it occurred to him belatedly that he should have spoken more slowly.

And more politely.

“Mine?” Arthur's surprise seemed genuine.

So genuine, that for a moment Eames even wondered—does he even have a soul? Eames knew nothing about demon souls, but he suspected that the black smoke must be it. In the meantime, Arthur came closer, keeping his hands in his pockets and looking at Eames with friendly expectation—or as friendly as a demon can look. Eames couldn't help getting distracted as he admired him. The beautifully tailored and expensive-looking suit, extravagant, like all Arthur's suits. The sleek way that the trousers fit his hips sent Eames's thoughts completely off track.

“No! Dom's soul!” said Eames, snapping out of his daze.

“So you're here about work,” drawled Arthur. “Eames, I'm heartbroken. Who is Dom?”

“My partner Dom.”

“Oh, that Dom.” Arthur came very close—so close that Eames could see the pupils of his eyes. One more step, and they could kiss. Could, that is, if Dom the dumbass hadn't sold his soul, and Arthur hadn't bought it. “Right, the partner from whom you're hiding our relationship.”

His little smile made a chill run over Eames's skin. And not from fear at all. _Relationship_.

You bet he was hiding it from Dom.

“We're not in a relationship, darling,” he said. “And one of your girls bought Dom's soul, so give it back, and we can all go home.”

Arthur's smile widened.

“Aren't you a bit too insolent, mortal?”

Something in his voice made Eames pause and consider. Yes, if he thought about it, it wasn't likely that Arthur would return a “fairly purchased” soul. And no matter how much Eames wanted to say that Dom hadn't known what he was getting into, it just wasn't true. Nor did it change the situation.

While he was thinking, Arthur took a black notebook out of his pocket and started flipping through its pages.

“Sorry,” Eames said. “I'm upset.”

“Upset that your partner is reunited with his one true love?” Arthur asked sarcastically. He finally found the page he needed, read it—and snapped the notebook shut. “A standard deal, just as I thought. Good night, Eames.”

“Stop!” exclaimed Eames. He wouldn't put it past Arthur to just turn around and leave, and he'd be lucky if he left things on such a non-violent note. “I'm willing to buy it back!”

“Is that so?”

“What do you want?” asked Eames.

He knew perfectly well that a soul was an insanely expensive commodity, and at this point Arthur had all the advantages on his side, and could name any price. Even one that Eames would not be able to pay.

“Well...” Arthur pretended to be deep in thought. “I might agree to a couple of souls—not the most sinful ones, if you know what I mean. How about that? Convince a couple of chance acquaintances of yours, nothing could be easier. And you get Dom Cobb's contract.”

What do you know, he remembered Dom's last name—or read it in his little book.

“You know that I can't do something like that,” said Eames sullenly. “I can't just hand over some innocents for eternal torment.”

“Innocents?” Arthur waived him off with a little laugh. “You can practice your speech for the hunter's convention some other time, okay? Fine, fine, don't give me that look, or I might start thinking that you drew a trap and hid it under some sand.”

Eames couldn't help glancing down at his feet, but, of course, there was no trap there.

“I really should have,” he complained. “Name another price.”

This time Arthur didn't think it over at all—smiling seductively, he took that last step forward, and now their lips were almost touching.

“Allow me to occupy your body sometimes.” Arthur's fingers slid down Eames's chest, and he shuddered at the suddenness of the touch. “Cut these things off, or break them, and I promise that I won't do anything... irreparable.”

Eames licked his lips. He covered Arthur's hand with his own, caressing the skin with his thumb.

“Absolutely not,” he whispered. “Those parts of you that already spend time in me are more than enough.”

Arthur stepped back, crossed his arms over his chest, and considered Eames doubtfully.

“You're doing a pretty crappy job of saving your friend, Eames. Okay, one more chance—let's pretend I'm having a black Friday sale. Bring me an angel blade, and you can have the contract.”

Eames giggled. First, because it really was Friday, and second... an angel blade?

“Maybe I should just bring you a magic wand while I'm at it?”

Arthur sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Don't project your Harry Potter enthusiasm on me.” He smirked when Eames flushed red. So what? Everyone likes Harry Potter! “An angel blade is a real thing, not a magic wand. Although...” Arthur looked thoughtful as he mimed something about a foot long with his fingers. “Strange, why haven't I thought of it before...” He laughed too, but then immediately shook his head and continued in a serious voice, “It's an angel's weapon. It looks like a magi... like a dagger. Anyway, you'll recognize it right away when you see it, Eames.”

“And how do you get one?”

“Usually—take it off an angel's body,” Arthur answered matter-of-factly. “But maybe you'll get lucky and some absentminded angel will lose his magic stick...”

“Are you suggesting that I kill an angel?!” Eames was quiet for a while. “You know, it looks like Dom is out of luck.”

Arthur rubbed his temples, as if he had a sudden migraine attack.

“Eames, I already met you more than halfway. I didn't ask for your soul, although that would have been logical. I offered you several options. You're the one who came to bargain, so why am I wasting my time?”

In a split second Eames covered the distance between them, and in another second they were kissing so passionately that the seriousness of the situation was pushed far to the back of his mind.

The seriousness of the situation.

Dom Cobb.

“Come up with something else,” Eames asked, tearing himself away. “Isn't there anything else you need?”

“I need that rightfully earned soul.” For a few moments Arthur stared at Eames expressionlessly, then he sighed heavily. “Fine, there's one more thing. But that's my last offer.” He took out his notebook again and tried to open it.

Eames grabbed his hand.

“Wait. Maybe... maybe you can tell me over dinner?”

The notebook disappeared, and Arthur smiled.

“With pleasure.”

-~-~-~-~-~-

Then they had dinner and rented a hotel room, because Eames's own apartment was bound to have an answer-craving Dom staking it out, and he was the last person Eames wanted to see right now, and especially the last person he wanted to introduce to Arthur.

And then they were about to get to the lovemaking, when that same Dom the dumbass cockblocked him.

It was terribly unfair.

-~-~-~-~-~-

“So you're saying that he wants the book?” Dom asked in a businesslike tone.

He was pretending with all his might that nothing particularly special happened, that he never sold his soul or broke down the door of a hotel room, and that they're just planning out a routine job.

But Eames was still sulking. Even if Dom did pay for the door.

“ Not just any book, Stevenson's book. The bloodthirsty, vindictive, and very sly bastard who lives in a bunker and brutally murders anyone who crosses him,” Eames reminded him. “But other than that, you got the gist.”

Stevenson was a hunter, but he didn't have so much as an ounce of human decency in him. According to the information that Arthur willingly shared, everyone he'd sent before to steal the book (which, by the way, was nothing less than the Satanic apocrypha—binding made out of the skin of martyrs, and all that) Stevenson had killed. Eames was extremely reluctant to follow in their steps. Arthur, of course, was under the impression that it was Cobb who was going to get the book, since it was his soul on the line, and Eames didn't bother to set him straight.

How could he possibly let Dom go there alone?

“So how are we going to get it?” was Dom's immediate question.

Which is precisely what remained to be demonstrated. And just think, instead of sitting on his boring old couch with an overexcited Dom for company, he could have been lying in a nice soft bed, with company of a much more pleasant kind.

“And, by the way, how did you get in contact with this demon?” judging by the expression on his face, this question worried Dom much more than the first. And how did he manage to restrain himself from asking questions as Eames was explaining that it was Arthur who owned his contract, and that Dom's soul can be bought back? It must have been a miracle. “Did he find out that you're gay? Or did he seduce you into it? And why didn't you tell me you're gay?”

Eames leaned back against the couch. It was a complicated question, and, on the one hand, Dom had a right to be mad. They were friends and partners, and if Eames was going to discuss his personal life with anyone, it should have been with him. But Eames _didn't like_ discussing his personal life. A significant portion of this same personal life was something that was not a good idea to discuss with a hunter. And even though Eames was a hunter himself, he doubted that Dom would understand and accept.

Eames did not want to discuss Arthur with Dom.

That's why he would sometimes tell Dom about girls—short-term flings with whom Eames killed time to their mutual satisfaction and then never saw again. He would nod along when Dom gave him “wise” lectures on how it was time to settle down and start a family. Eames didn't want to settle down, and he didn't want a family. He was thirty three—not such an advanced age that he had to lament missed opportunities at happiness.

“I'm not gay,” Eames finally said.

Because he wasn't seeing men. He was only seeing Arthur—that is, he wasn't seeing him, because Arthur was a demon, and how can someone be seeing a demon? It wasn't a relationship, it's just that they sometimes... hung out, and sometimes had sex, and no, Eames will not start wondering again if demons even needed sex, or if it was all an act, to snatch his soul away, unnoticed.

His soul hasn't been in the right place for a long time anyway.

“Eames...” Dom turned red, then pale, then green, and this rapid change in color looked a bit creepy. “You didn't...? I'm so grateful to you, Eames, but you didn't, did you... You didn't have to...?”

“Have to what?” Eames asked in an icy tone.

“You didn't have to sleep with him to buy back my contract?” Dom blurted out at the speed of a machine gun round.

Eames gave him a wholehearted shove. Dom rolled off the couch, landed on the floor with a loud grunt, and sat there, rubbing his head and staring at Eames with genuine shock.

“What was that for?”

“You might as well say that I allowed my maidenhead to be defiled, to save a friend.”

Judging by the look on his face, that's pretty much what Dom was thinking. And even though it actually was Arthur with whom Eames lost his virginity, he still reached out and gave Dom a smack on the back of the head. For prophylactic purposes.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Eames met Arthur when he was sixteen. Eames, that is—Arthur was definitely older than that. And all the circumstances of their first meeting strongly resembled that fairy tale about Bluebeard. Except without the beard. And without the wives, because Eames refused to think of himself as a wife in any possible context.

But his father said:

“Stay out of the basement.”

And the first thing that Eames did as soon as his father's pickup truck disappeared around the corner? Naturally, he went to the basement.

The demon was sitting in the center of a pentagram and stared up at him as Eames walked down the stairs. It looked just like a human—young and harmless, but Eames recognized it for what it was right away. Eames knew demon traps very well.

His first impulse was to turn around and run away. The demon gave him the same feeling as a loaded gun, or a bomb—looks like a simple little thing, but capable of killing you at any moment. The glowing lines of the pentagram gave him no sense of security—the animal in Eames would have preferred a cage with thick bars, or something equally demonstrative, even though it would not hold the demon back.

And why did his father trap it?

His curiosity struggled for some time against his fear and caution, and finally won out. Eames approached the edge of the trap carefully, making sure not to step on it. Up close the demon looked exhausted, and it didn't attempt to get up or talk to Eames—although that could've all been a clever ruse. He wondered how long the demon had been there. Eames and his father had returned from a job two weeks ago, and since then his father kept going away for a couple days at a time, then coming back, but he spent the last four days holed up at the house—and yes, most of that time in the basement.

And he hadn't wanted Eames to go down here.

It was all mysterious and strange. If the demon was possessing someone's body, why not just exorcise it? Even Eames could have done that. If it had done something bad, or threatened to, Eames's father would have killed it a long time ago. He was not known for excessive gentleness, especially to monsters.

“Hi, demon,” Eames said, mentally preparing for a stream of lies and temptations, which the demon would pour on him any second now. But his father taught him well, and he would not succumb.

Except the demon stayed silent and looked at him with light mockery, in no hurry to produce any such outpouring. It seemed that tempting a teenager was not part of its plans, and Eames could not help feeling angry.

“You're probably pissed that you got caught, right? My father can't stand demons, as I'm sure you've noticed by now. I don't know why he put you in here...”

The demon didn't even try to hold up its end of the conversation. Just sat there, silent.

“And by the way, why _did_ he put you in here?” Eames struck a careless pose, even though this one-sided chat was beginning to make him tense. Usually you didn't have to cajole demons, they babbled non-stop on their own. “Did you possess someone's body? I get it, anyone would want a piece of _that_...”

He stopped suddenly, realizing that he blurted out too much, and felt his cheeks flush with heat, belatedly. The demon was attractive, gorgeous even, but Eames hadn't planned on revealing his sexual orientation. Shit, it seems that the silence tactic was pretty effective, too. Eames unconsciously reached for the amulet around his neck, suddenly afraid that the demon managed to put him under a spell even without words.

“Fine, stay quiet if you want to,” Eames stuck his chin up, demonstrating that he wasn't a bit flustered and was in complete control of the situation. “I could get you to talk, but I'm not going to mess with my father's business. Have fun.”

The demon gave a short, annoyed sigh, as if Eames was bothering him: distracting him from something important or not letting him relax—on a comfy hard floor in the middle of an invigorating and refreshing pentagram. And then he raised a hand to his throat and shook his head. He couldn't speak.

Eames flew out of the basement at the speed of a bullet, sure that his face was still burning.

His father returned that evening, and immediately went down into the basement. Eames listened keenly, but not a sound reached him, so finally he went to bed.

-~-~-~-~-~-

“Why are you keeping a demon in the basement?” Eames asked.

He'd gone down there the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and today. It was starting to become a habit—a rather strange habit. The demon looked worse and worse: there were shadows under his eyes, his face had sharpened from dehydration, and today there was a fresh bruise on his cheek. And yes, Eames hated demons, but what was happening was starting to give him an uncomfortable prickling feeling in his chest. If his father needed something, why hadn't he taken it yet and banished the demon back to hell, or wherever the hell he'd come from? Torture didn't sit too well with Eames's inner principles.

Eames knew that his father's principles were somewhat different.

“I forbade you to go down there.” His father, calm only a moment ago, now turned sharply and stared at him with rage—and Eames recoiled. He could really get it for taking things into his own hands.

“Why don't you exorcise it?” he asked bravely.

“None of your business.” His father controlled himself with effort. “I need something from him. If you want to look at him, go ahead, but if you try to interfere, I will rip your head off.”

He sounded quite serious.

The very next day Eames waited for his father to drive off to the store, and went down to the basement holding a glass of water. Which he pushed carefully into the pentagram. The demon looked at the water, and then at Eames, with a malevolent squint, then got up and took a step back, as if he didn't know what to expect.

“It's not poison or holy water,” Eames said. “Listen, I don't like you—you're a god-damn demon, and I would banish you with extreme pleasure. So don't get any funny notions. It's just that I respect the Geneva Convention.”

The demon gave him a crooked smirk, sat down on the floor again, and cautiously dipped a finger in the water. Nothing happened—obviously nothing happened, Eames wouldn't lie, not even to a demon!

“Why don't you hurry up,” Eames advised. “Anyway, I'm trying to be a good guy here, not that any of you demons would understand something like that.”

The demon raised his eyebrows, pointed a finger at Eames, then at himself, and shook his head. “You don't know me,” Eames translated. As if he really needed to know any particular demon to understand what they were generally like.

When the demon picked up the glass after all, Eames was surprised at how relieved he felt.

-~-~-~-~-~-

Eames tried to come every day, to bring water and just to talk. The demon stopped trying to communicate with gestures, but he did listen, and Eames babbled non-stop. He didn't tell him anything personal: not about his father and his cruelty and indifference, nor about the exhausting hunts, nor the reprimands of his teachers when Eames had no time for homework, nor his friends, who could never be told the truth.

But he did tell him about funny moments that happened on hunts, about school, about his favorite bands and movies. It was probably all far from interesting for the demon, but it's not like he had any choice but to listen, and sometimes Eames even thought that he was paying close attention.

Eames knew that the body would die soon. He tried not to think too much about what methods his father was using to get what he wanted—either way, hunger and thirst would take their toll eventually. The demon would be stuck in the trap with a decaying corpse, and what then?

“Your demon is dying,” he said at dinner, faking nonchalance. “What'd he do?”

His father was in a decent mood today—he didn't yell at Eames or tell him to shut up, just shrugged and said:

“Nothing. But he won't want to die, it's just a bluff. He'll sign the contract.”

“You want to sign a contract with a demon?” Eames was taken aback.

“I want to get something from him.” Judging from his tone, his father was losing his patience, and Eames decided it was better to stop talking.

-~-~-~-~-~-

The next evening Eames saw that the demon was going into shock. White face, sweating, unfocused gaze—Eames had seen this before, and these symptoms promised nothing good.

“Will you give my father what he wants?” Eames asked.

The demon shook his head. Eames didn't know if this was stubbornness, or if he simply _couldn't_ give it to him, and it didn't matter. Eames sighed. He should be happy that it would all be over, one way or another. Sleeping in the same house as a demon... it was hardly pleasant.

He turned around without saying anything, and went back to his room. The malicious satisfaction that he got from knowing that his father would not get what he wanted was mingled in him with other feelings, which Eames would have been hard put to name. It went without saying that any demon deserved suffering and death, but...

Enough worrying, he decided. After all, it was none of his business. None of his business!

But at night, when his father went to sleep, Eames put on every single one of his protective amulets and went down to the basement. He was doing something horribly stupid, even criminal. He knew that. His father would not forgive him. If he even found Eames alive, which was highly unlikely.

“What am I doing,” he muttered under his breath. “I must be psychotic.”

He took out a knife and scratched at the floor, scraping off a layer of paint, and breaking the circle that kept the demon inside. He would regret this for sure, and everything in his belly was squirming from fear and nerves. Eames clutched at the knife convulsively and looked up.

The trap was empty.

The demon had vanished.

Fifteen minutes later Eames's father found him—he was still sitting on the floor, trying to wrap his mind around what the heck he just did.

-~-~-~-~-~-

Eames's father kicked him out of the house, sending him to live with a family of distant relatives—also hunters. To be honest, Eames didn't particularly regret this.

He didn't regret any of it.

He never thought that he would meet that demon again. On the contrary, he made every effort to get him out of his head. That demon must have been thrilled that he was lucky enough to stumble on an impressionable teenager. Well, fine, at least he didn't come back to take revenge.

So when half a year later strange things started happening in a small southern town, and when Eames and his new family got there and found out that it was a crossroads demon making trouble... Eames wasn't expecting any surprises. He just went off to the crossroads at night and buried a box with the ingredients, without telling his guardian—because yes, he was young and dumb, wanted to play the hero, and even prepared a clever (or so he thought) trap.

“You must be an idiot,” an unfamiliar voice made him jump a foot into the air.

But the face though—the face _was_ familiar. So he wasn't mute, after all. For some reason that was Eames's first thought. And his second thought...

“So you're the one causing trouble here?!”

For some strange reason this offended Eames to the bottom of his soul.

The demon, however, did not bother talking to him. Instead, he snatched Eames by the elbow, and then everything was spinning, and they ended up in some alley, which looked nothing like the crossroads where Eames was just a moment ago.

“If you want to sell your soul so badly, let's discuss it.” The demon was obviously irritated.

He was even more good-looking now: the emaciated look was gone without a trace, his dark skin radiated good health, his hair shone, and his suit demonstrated good taste and good money. And for a few moments Eames stared stupidly, stunned by this offer, and angered, and surprised.

“I wasn't going to sell my soul!” he reached for his flask of holy water, but the demon quickly stepped away to a safe distance. “I was going to stop you.”

“Stop me from doing what?”

“From harming people!”

The demon sighed.

“Definitely an idiot. How could you stop me even if I did—for the sake of argument—decide to harm the people in this village?”

That was some snobbery.

“But you were buying their souls!”

“As if I have nothing better to do. There's another businessman here. But he...” the demon wiggled his fingers, “had to step away, so you got lucky.”

“I made an excellent trap!” Eames blurted out—and then almost punched himself in the mouth.

The demon laughed. Well, actually he brayed inelegantly, and this mocking laughter made Eames grab at the flask again.

“Your childish prattle wouldn't even scare a novice. But if you would like to have your flesh flayed off your bones,” the demon turned to leave, “have it your way.”

“And what's it to you, anyway?” asked Eames.

The demon stopped and turned back around.

“I was just curious.”

The strange things in that town stopped happening the very next day. But Eames was too busy dealing with this sudden meeting and the chewing out he got from his guardian. So he didn't think about this coincidence much.

-~-~-~-~-~-

The next time they met—a month later—Eames asked him what his name was.

-~-~-~-~-~-

When Arthur fucked him for the first time, it was the best night of Eames's life. Although, no—the best one was the first time that he fucked Arthur.

-~-~-~-~-~-

And, obviously, they were not in a relationship.


	4. Chapter 4

“So then, he _did_ corrupt you?” Cobb asked while Eames was taking his guns apart and cleaning them.

Seriously? He had nothing better to worry about?

“I was already eighteen,” Eames waved him off dismissively.

“Regardless, I'm sure sorcery was involved somehow.”

“Have you seen him?” Eames sighed. “With looks like that, would he need sorcery?”

“I don't know, I would've been put off by the sulfur smell and the black eyes.”

“Arthur smells like ginger,” Eames turned away, hoping that Dom would get the hint and leave him alone, “and his eyes are brown. And during sex...”

“Information which I never wanted to know,” Cobb quickly interrupted.

And occupied himself with his guns.

-~-~-~-~-~-

“So, you're saying you're in a relationship with him?”

Eames was saying nothing of that sort—on the contrary, at the moment he was silent, listening for the slightest rustle. Stevenson's house was usually guarded by trained dogs.

“We're not in a relationship.”

“But you go on dates.”

“They're not dates. We eat and we talk, like all normal people.”

“Except that he's a demon, and you're a hunter.”

“Except for that,” Eames conceded.

But at that point a snarling dog's snout popped up right in front of his face, and the conversation had to be interrupted.

-~-~-~-~-~-

“But hasn't he ever tried to get in your way?” even a howling siren couldn't put a damper on Cobb's curiosity.

Honest to god, Eames was struggling with the temptation to just shoot him and dump him here, and let him deal with Stevenson himself, when he catches the intruder.

“He's helped me several times.”

Right at that moment a stream of fire erupted out of the wall, straight into Eames's face. The amulet under his clothes singed his skin, and the fire went out, not causing Eames even the slightest harm. The amulet was a gift from Arthur, and could have illustrated Eames's point very well, if he'd been in a chatty mood.

The fact that he sometimes did favors for Arthur as well... he chose not to mention that, either.

“But are you sure that you haven't signed anything?” Cobb made a neat jump over a wire stretched across the hallway, and who would have thought—it didn't make him any less talkative.

“Let's talk about this later, okay?!” Eames finally snapped at him.

-~-~-~-~-~-

“So, he's a crossroads demon?”

Eames, who was using tweezers to yank large chunks of plastic out of his own arm, rolled his eyes. This interrogation was getting on his last nerve.

“No, he was a knight, and then he decided to go into business.”

“What kind of business?”

A particularly tenacious splinter was refusing to come out, and Eames's eyes were starting to tear up from the strain. Arthur's business was rare artifacts, which he acquired and then resold to whoever was interested. Nothing valuable enough to put the entire world on edge, but valuable enough not to advertise his activities. His cover were the pretty girls who made deals on the crossroads of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Oxnard—Arthur liked the coast.

“Don't get offended, but I'm not telling you.”

The book—an enormous black tome without any inscriptions on the cover—was settled safely in his lap, and Eames cut short all of Cobb's attempts to get his hands on this treasure.

“But what makes you think that he won't lie to us?”

“He never lies to me,” said Eames.

Dom had his skeptical face on, but Eames was feeling wonderful. Well, aside from the splinters. In a couple of hours he will hand this nasty thing over to Arthur, get Dom's contract, and everything will be wonderful. And Mal will stay alive.

Isn't it great?

-~-~-~-~-~-

The problems started when Mal refused to get out of the house.

“Sweetheart,” Cobb was begging. “I just don't want you to be anywhere near a demon.”

“But what danger could I possibly be in?” Mal was indignant. “Eames will just hand over the book and get the contract. And I still think that it was very stupid of him—to make a contract with a demon.”

Cobb said nothing to her. Eames scowled, but felt he had no right to reveal unpleasant truths to someone else's wife.

“Mal, please...”

“I'm gonna go take a nap for a couple of hours,” he said, not wanting to be a witness to this scene.

The guest room was warm, and before he fell asleep, Eames spent all of five minutes thinking: why Dom never told Mal what happened, what he would do if she were to find out, did the contract include not only her memory loss, but also all her friends' and acquaintances'—somehow it never occurred to Eames to ask about this before.

He drifted off wondering what Arthur was planning to do with the book.

-~-~-~-~-~-

“I should have guessed,” Arthur looked Eames up and down unhappily, “that you wouldn't stay out of it.”

Without even glancing at him, he handed Cobb a folded sheet of thick paper. Cobb grabbed it, looking like a man who was holding his own soul in hands.

Which, to be honest, is pretty much what it was.

“Aww, were you worried, sunshine?” Eames grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Oh, here.”

He handed the book to Arthur, who immediately focused on its pages. Mal watched this exchange with suspicion, and Eames knew that there would be questions later—and he was hoping that Cobb was prepared for them, because he himself had no intention of inventing any lies.

“Eames, come here,” Cobb called him tensely.

He was holding the contract in his hands and staring at the shaggy rug in the middle of the room. Arthur's shoes were sinking into the fluffy pile, and it suddenly occurred to Eames that they could have sex on a rug like this without any risk of rug burn.

“Dom?” he asked, coming over to Cobb. He felt a prickling of unease—what if there was something off about the contract? He didn't believe that Arthur would lie, but who knows, even he sometimes made mistakes.

Cobb shuffled his feet nervously.

“I just...”

“It's not real,” said Arthur. And it wasn't even his words, it was his tone of voice that made Eames look up with a start.

“What?”

“The book is not real,” Arthur repeated.

He took a step forward, toward Eames, but then stopped suddenly, as if he stumbled into an invisible wall. For a moment his face twisted with astonishment, and then froze. Flames leaped up around Arthur, burning Cobb's favorite rug to ashes—and right under it, on the floor, there was a carefully drawn pentagram.

“Cobb?” Eames whispered in disbelief. Arthur was looking only at him, and he himself could not look away from Arthur, even if the cold understanding in his eyes was making Eames shudder. “What's this about?”

“What it's about is that I have no intention of relying on a demon's good will,” declared Cobb.

It sounded dramatic, just like something from a movie. Dom was fond of theatrical scenes in general, but right now Eames had no desire to be an audience for one of these performances.

“He gave back your contract.”

“I prefer a deal with a warranty,” replied Cobb.

“Aren't we real brave now,” said Arthur with contempt, “two days ago you didn't make so much as a squeak about any warranties.”

He circled the trap, looking for a weak spot, but Cobb had put some real effort into it—the lines were thick and sturdy.

“I thought it was Eames who made the deal,” Mal butted in, confused.

“Mal, please, could you...” Dom began to wheedle.

Arthur flashed them a smile, and even considering the trap, it looked menacing.

“Oh, darling, didn't they tell you?”

“Shut up!” Cobb was turning scarlet.

“Tell me what?”

“It's not Eames who sold his soul, he's not that much of an idiot,” Arthur's tone was flippant, but Eames was not fooled for a second.

“Dom sold his soul?” Mal was taken aback. “But... but for what?”

“Why don't you use your head and figure it out.”

Dom whipped out a pistol and cocked it, but Eames managed to grab his arm in time and pushed the barrel down.

“Rip up the contract,” he demanded. “Right now.”

Cobb opened his mouth to protest, but restricted himself to a fiery glance. He put the gun back in the holster, and ripped the contract into pieces. The shreds flared up and dissolved into vapor.

“He's in a trap, so he won't do anything else to us. And he won't be able to harm people,” said Dom vehemently. Somehow his indignation was nowhere to be found when his wife had returned safe and sound—the same wife who was now standing there with a pale, shocked face, because Cobb hadn't told her the truth. “Exorcising him is pointless, but we could...”

Eames let go of his arm, took two steps back—and then crouched down and rubbed at the edge of the pentagram with his fingers, breaking the circle.

Arthur could, of course, kill them. But Eames wasn't thinking about that.

Eames wasn't thinking about anything at all.

He lifted his face, looking up at him, hoping for something inexpressible. Maybe that Arthur would say: “Oh, don't think anything of it, darling, I'm not angry,” and would invite him to dinner. And Arthur totally could. Serving up Eames's own heart for the main course.

Arthur stared at him, cold and calculating, for a few seconds, as the room sank into silence. Then darkness shrouded his eyes and he vanished, leaving the unfortunate book in his place.

Eames picked it up mechanically.

“Eames, are you nuts?” Cobb started yelling. “What are you doing? I... no, first I'll pour salt on all the windowsills. Right now...”

He was already out in the hallway when he finished that phrase. Eames was left standing there with Mal, a broken trap on the floor, and stupefaction.

“I didn't know,” he said dazedly. He was still hugging the fake book to his chest, and he noticed it only now. For some reason it was important for him to justify himself, even if only in front of Mal. In front of anyone. “I didn't mean to lie.”

Mal laughed—a bit hysterically, but considering the circumstances, it was to be expected.

“But he's a demon.”

“He brought you back to life.” Yes, it was cruel of him, but she didn't have to state the obvious, either. He knew that Arthur was a demon.

“For Dom's soul.” The hysteria was still there, but now there was a lot less mirth in her voice.

“And he agreed to give it back. In exchange for nothing more than some book.” Eames opened his fingers, and the heavy tome fell to the floor, right onto the edge of the pentagram. “We breached the contract, and you're still alive—we're all still alive, and Dom has his soul. And who is the liar in this case?”

“So I guess you outsmarted a demon.”

That was probably supposed to be a compliment.

“I guess I did.” Eames tried to smile, but it must have come out looking evil.

“And you regret saving a friend? Whom you've known for seven years?”

“I regret lying to a friend, whom I've known for seventeen years. And I thought that we humans were supposed to be honorable, even with demons—isn't that what's supposed to distinguish us from them, anyway?”

Eames knew that it sounded stupid, pathetic, even, and that Mal wasn't convinced. And she had every right, it was normal to be happy that you miraculously escaped death.

Except Eames himself would have been a lot more happy if everything had gone as planned.

“I'm gonna go,” he said. “I'll see you later?”

“Of course. I should... I should talk to Dom, right?”

“You definitely need to talk to Dom.”

-~-~-~-~-~-

At home he felt... at home he didn't feel like anything. Eames ransacked his modest bar—actually, he wasn't a big fan of alcohol—and discovered a bottle of wine which had been a gift from Arthur, and what was left of his mood was completely ruined.

It was just fatigue and nervous tension, or so he told himself—and for the first couple of hours it sounded almost convincing. Then the TV began to infuriate him, but the silence got to him even worse, so Eames spent twenty minutes or so finding an acceptable compromise. It took him another ten minutes to decide to go to a nearby bar, to hang out and maybe find some company for the evening. It took him another five to realize that he wasn't going anywhere.

He didn't understand what was happening to him. Sure, the job hadn't gone down like he planned at all, but didn't that happen a lot in his line of work? A good two-thirds of his jobs hadn't gone as planned! The main thing was that Dom's soul was saved, and Mal was alive. Eames had saved two people, and he was glad, honestly, glad, but...

No, it was hardly the lie that was the problem. In spite of whatever he'd told Mal, Eames didn't give a shit about morals, and he'd shamelessly lied to demons in the past. But not to Arthur. He'd been honest with Arthur, and it seems that Arthur had been honest with him, and they were not in a relationship, it was just sex, it's just that they talked sometimes and worked together once in a while... That's not a relationship, is it?

Seventeen years, he had said to Mal, and he was suddenly struck by the enormity of that number. He had known Arthur for more than half of his life. Only yesterday thirty-three seemed like a young age—after all, his entire life was ahead of him, he'll have time to find someone—but now the empty house was depressing him. This whole time, he'd lived with the illusion of the temporary, but seventeen years wasn't such a short time.

And Arthur never did steal his soul.

If you think about it in the literal sense.

Eames put his hand on his chest. This must be the soul—this dull pain, and discontent, and resentment. If Arthur were to take it all away now, Eames wouldn't be too cut up about it.

At eleven thirty at night Eames left home and dragged himself to the nearest crossroads. He knew the ritual by heart.

But no one came to him.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter for part 1, but part 2 translation is coming up. It's a bit longer, so it might take some time to translate...

Eames wasn't answering Cobb's calls. Not because he was mad at him. No, there was nothing to be mad at, Cobb was only saving himself and his wife. It's just that Eames didn't want to talk to him. He suspected that their previous trusting (but was it really trusting? Eames tried not to think about that) relationship would be hard to restore. He suspected that he might not want to.

To restore it.

So he ignored Cobb's calls, and Mal's calls, and his landlady's calls, who kept trying to complain about “those friends of his, calling non-stop day and night.” Eames turned off his phone altogether, and opened that bottle after all. But, unfortunately, the wine was too classy to get pass-out drunk on it.

Not that Eames didn't try.

He went to the crossroads every night.

It seems that he couldn't have sold his soul, even if he'd wanted to.

On the sixth day of this ugly mess Cobb climbed in through the kitchen window, and Eames almost shot him, thinking he was a burglar. Or Stevenson. Or some vampire passing through. He didn't know what precisely he was thinking when he put the gun to Cobb's dumbass head.

“What the fuck, Eames?” asked Cobb.

He had some nerve asking such questions while standing on Eames's kitchen table, and in dirty boots, too!

“Yes, what the fuck, Cobb?” asked Eames. “I'm not the one climbing through your window.”

“I'm not the one who's not answering calls for five days,” Cobb countered.

Eames thought about it for a while. Yes, that claim did have some merit, but so what, was that a reason to crawl into someone house?

“I didn't want to talk to anyone.” Strangely enough, as soon as he said this, he immediately felt the urge to talk. To bare his soul.

Maybe even cry a little on a friendly shoulder.

“Because of that demon?”

Cobb shuffled from foot to foot: he never did get off the table, and the neighbors must be finding the sight of his ass in the window rather strange.

“His name is Arthur,” Eames said indignantly, even though it was stupid—Arthur was the last person to need someone to come to his defense, and especially to defend his _good name_. “And it's none of your business. You got what you wanted, Dom.”

“But for some reason you're not happy.”

Yes, Cobb was, as usual, perspicacity itself. It took five days for him to finally get that Eames was unhappy about something.

“Oh, no, not at all, I'm happy, I'm just ecstatic that it didn't even occur to you to let me know your plans. That you interfered in my deal. That you ruined my relationship with Arthur. I wanted to fulfill the contract, I didn't want to take advantage of him!”

“What's so bad about taking advantage of a demon?”

“We're in a relationship!” Eames couldn't hold back, and started to pace back and forth, nervously crumpling the hem of his t-shirt. “He gave back your fucking contract almost for nothing, he was worried about me, and I tricked him! We were in a relationship, don't you understand?”

“You can't be in a relationship with a demon,” Cobb declared confidently.

“The only thing you can't be in a relationship with is a corpse,” snarled Eames, “and somehow even that is not stopping you.”

Cobb was about to spring up, clearly intending to punch Eames in the face, but glanced at the gun—Eames just happened to forget to put it away—and restrained himself.

Which was too bad.

Maybe Eames wouldn't have been averse to giving and receiving some punches in the face.

“Listen,” Cobb sighed as he sat down on the table and fixed Eames with a penetrating gaze, “I can't say that I approve of all this. He's taking advantage of you, obviously to get something...”

“Get out,” Eames was fed up with this moralizing and wasn't going to listen to a third round of the same.

And he definitely wasn't asking for Dom's blessing. As if with Cobb's blessing everything would suddenly become all right.

“No, hold on!” Cobb held up a hand. “That's not what I meant. What I'm trying to say... so okay, we broke the contract. But that's not your fault. You might even say that you're the injured party. Doesn't your demon understand that?”

He was definitely making an effort in spite of himself, trying to support Eames as a friend. Not an easy task, and in a different situation Eames would have appreciated the attempt.

“He doesn't even want to listen to me,” Eames said bitterly.

Now was probably the right time to move on to the part of the conversation where he was going to sob on his friend's shoulder, but Cobb's shoulder didn't seem particularly conductive to sobbing on it.

“You said yourself that you're in a relationship,” Cobb shook his head, as if even the sound of that seemed implausible to his ears. “That means you should have honest conversations, and listen to each other, and forgive...”

“You must have made that deduction from personal experience,” Eames suggested in a smarmy tone.

“Oh, screw you!” But Dom didn't argue. On the contrary, he got back on his feet and turned to the window, as if intending to climb back out. “Dude, at least I wasn't dumped.”

“That's because your friends don't suck as much as mine do!” Eames yelled at his back.

But, strangely enough, after this conversation Eames felt a little better.

-~-~-~-~-~-

After dinner Mal showed up on Eames's doorstep. He let her in, grateful that at least she didn't get dirt on his freshly-scrubbed kitchen table.

“Hi.” She was clutching a rectangular package, rather large and messily wrapped in twine.

“Hi.” Good manners demanded that Eames offer her coffee and small-talk. But Eames was in no mood for good manners. He figured Mal would forgive him. “Did something happen?”

“No.”

They were quiet for a bit: Mal was fidgeting with the package, Eames was staring at Mal.

“Want some coffee?” Eames gave in.

Mal started, as if she was so deep in thought that she forgot where she was.

“No. I just stopped by to say a couple of things. Eames, I wanted to thank you...”

“It was nothing,” Eames really didn't regret for a second that he helped Dom—what else could he have done?—and didn't think that Mal owed him any thanks.

“...and to apologize.”

“Definitely coffee,” Eames decided, and turned to go into the kitchen.

Mal did owe him an apology. Except he never thought that she would show up and offer it.

“It's none of my business whom you love, and I shouldn't have tried to justify a deception.” She put the package down on the table with a bang. “You know why Dom did what he did. He doesn't trust demons, but he should've trusted you. You said that we're safe, and you turned out to be right. And we turned out to be more dishonest than a demon.”

“It's not important any more, Mal.”

“It is important.” Mal untied the twine and started to unwrap the package. “This is for you. It belonged to my father. I only found out after you left, otherwise I wouldn't have let you take such a risk. But I knew—later on, when Dom made that trap—I _knew_ that the book was fake. And I didn't tell you anything.”

“You knew?” Eames was flabbergasted.

“Yes, because this one,” the paper flew aside, and the very same book lay there on the table in front of him, “this one is the real one.”

Eames's mouth went dry.

“I dropped it in your house. You could have just brought that one and said that it's the original.”

“I could have.” Mal deflated. “I understand your mistrust. But I want to repay my debt, and also, I want you and Dom to be friends, and also... I always prided myself on doing the right thing. So I'm giving you the book, it's yours, and you can do with it whatever you want. My father will be against it, but my life, Dom's soul, and your happiness are worth more. Right?” she smiled at him timidly.

-~-~-~-~-~-

Eames checked all the ingredients, shut the box, and began to dig with determination. The trick should work, especially if the same inexperienced girl showed up, like last time.

“Hi, sweetheart,” the magical contralto sounded behind his back before Eames had time to even finish that thought. It worked, excellent! Eames turned around with a wide grin. “Hey, is that you? We were ordered not to...”

She stuttered to a stop, suddenly realizing what was happening.

“And that's exactly why I made this trap,” Eames waved a hand, “and changed the ritual a little. Cool, right?”

The girl, apparently, did not think so. She looked glum as she examined the sand-covered pentagram that she'd stepped into so carelessly.

“When the boss finds out, you're going to have big problems.”

“I'm really counting on it,” said Eames. He pulled a deck of cards from his pocket. “How about a game of poker, just to pass the time?”

The girl thought about it.

“I don't have any money on me.”

“Then we'll play strip poker.”

-~-~-~-~-~-

An hour later it really got cold, and Eames shivered without his shirt. How the girl must be feeling with only her lingerie on... Eames didn't care to ask. The lingerie, by the way, was very cute. He wondered if Arthur's relationship with them was strictly professional. He was a demon after all, he should be prone to committing vices...

Actually, Arthur had never shown any particular inclination for vices, unless his bedroom activities with Eames counted as such. But he still felt jealousy, like a slice of lemon on his tongue.

“What's your name, darling?” Eames asked.

The girl was examining her bra intently, clearly wondering if she could rip off a bow or a frill and use it as her next payment.

“Olivia.”

“Listen, Olivia...”

The hand that grabbed him by the hair at the back of his head interrupted any questions Eames was about to ask.

“Amusing ourselves during work time?” Arthur's voice was cold enough to freeze a volcano.

“It's not my fault, boss,” Olivia immediately started to make excuses. “He tricked me.”

“That doesn't surprise me.” Arthur leaned down, looking into Eames's face. “What do you need?”

“To talk.”

Arthur let go of his hair and straightened up. For a few seconds he looked at Eames with an unreadable face, so foreign and unfamiliar. Eames had never seen him like this before. This is a demon, Eames thought, a demon who can turn you into ash where you stand, and you didn't even bring any weapons, idiot.

Arthur was right, he'll die from this own stupidity.

But at least Eames got what he wanted.

“Let the girl go, and we'll talk.” Arthur finally decided.

Eames—without even thinking twice—erased the edge of the pentagram. If they were going to have an ugly scene, he didn't want any witnesses either.

“I didn't lie to you,” he said before Arthur had a chance to disappear. “I didn't know that it was fake.”

“You think I'm going to believe that?” Arthur shook his head. “I'm not angry. Demons don't always win... Okay, I'm angry, but I'm not going to take revenge—is that what you wanted to know?”

“I wanted to tell you that I didn't lie to you! And I didn't know anything about the trap, either!”

“Your best friend didn't tell you? Yeah, right.”

Arthur was practically radiating skepticism.

“I didn't know,” Eames repeated. “I wouldn't have lied to you.”

“Why shouldn't you lie to a demon?”

“You're not just a demon. We're in a relationship!”

“We're not in any relationship,” said Arthur sullenly.

Suddenly Eames was overcome with laughter.

“No, no, of course not, we're not in a relationship,” he corrected himself. “But look what I brought you.”

He picked up the book, which was once again wrapped in paper, and handed it to Arthur. His laughter vanished without a trace when he saw Arthur visibly waver. But in the end he took the gift and unwrapped it.

“I should have asked for an angel blade,” he muttered, carefully flipping through the pages.

“If it was absolutely vital to you,” Eames said, surprising himself, “I would get it for you. I had no part in this stupidity, Arthur.”

Arthur re-wrapped the book—slowly and carefully, as if he needed time to think.

“You should teach your friends some honesty.”

“I'm working on it,” he assured him. “And Arthur, since we're not in a relationship, maybe we can have dinner?”

“Bull by the horns, Eames?”

“It's my nature...”

“Fine, but you're paying.”

“I'm paying? You're the one who's rich!”

“You're paying, Eames.”

Eames sighed loudly.

“Okay, I'm paying. Just... Let me get dressed, okay?”

“Now, _that_ is entirely up to you.”

“And after dinner we can go to my place,” Eames was hurriedly buttoning up his shirt. “And no Cobb...”

“Are you sure?”

Eames seriously considered the question.

“We can block the bedroom door with a dresser, just in case.”

He could have sworn that Arthur was laughing, and ran to catch up with his retreating back.

  
  


**Epilogue**

“Eames! Eames, are you there?! Eames, I'm coming!”

The dresser was shaking and its legs were screeching against the floor, scratching the hardwood, as Cobb tried to break in from the other side, determined to save Eames from some unknown threat.

Eames, who currently had Arthur's cock inside him—full length, and just a second ago it was _marvelous_ , thanks!--was blinking vacantly. And then he stretched out his arm and pulled a gun from under the pillow.

“Open that door Dom, and I'll shoot you in the leg!” he yelled. “I'm not alone, mother fucker!”

The knocking stopped, replaced by deathly silence.

“I'll.. I'll stop by later,” said Cobb in a squeaky voice.

“ _Much,_ _much_ later.”

“Sorry.”

“It's okay.”

“Bye.”

“Bye, Dom. Arthur, what?...”

Arthur moved away from Eames and covered his head with a pillow. His whole body was shaking with laughter, and... What, did fucking Cobb just cockblock Eames again?

“I hate you,” Eames told Arthur.

“It's okay,” he stuck his head out from under the pillow and patted Eames on the shoulder, but then doubled up with laughter again. “It's okay, I'll live somehow.”

 

 

 


End file.
